


All We Ever Wanted (Was Everything)

by PazithiGallifreya



Series: Lady Cadash [7]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 04:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14371173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PazithiGallifreya/pseuds/PazithiGallifreya
Summary: Thom Rainier wrangles with his past (quite literally), and the Inquisitor is just plain tired of this shit.Alas, there is no end in sight...





	All We Ever Wanted (Was Everything)

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the defeat of Corypheus, but before the beginning of Trespasser. 
> 
> (I may get into Trespasser, and beyond at a later time, if anyone is interested.)

He could take a split lip and a bloody nose. His left eye was swelling shut swiftly, but he didn't think the damage was permanent. The bruised ribs were more troublesome and he thought one might be cracked, but that was something to think about later.

" _You."_

Jean had taken one look at his old Captain and spit the word like a foul taste, then proceeded to unceremoniously pummel the stuffing out of (former) Captain Thom Rainier. Curiously, it only took about eight hard blows before the old soldier ran out of steam. Or perhaps curiosity at his target's lack of response had won out over his anger, at least for the moment.

Thom wiped futilely at the blood pouring from his nose and lip with the back of a hand and rolled up to his knees on the dirt-and-sawdust floor of the dim workshop, but he did not attempt stand. A worn pair of leather hobnail boots scraped at the dirt in front of him as their owner paced a tight figure-eight, swearing under his breath.

"I'd heard some rather unbelievable bullshit stories about you a few months ago, Rainier, but I never thought for a moment you'd be stupid enough to show your sorry face in Orlais again."

Thom tilted his head, peering up with his remaining undamaged eye. Jean's mouth was pressed to a thin line and his fists were clenched at his sides. Thom waited in patient silence as Jean weighed the prospective appeal of talking more versus continued violence.

"You don't even fight back. You're still a coward, Rainier."

Thom still said nothing, having no particular defense for what he felt was a fair accusation. Jean turned his back to Thom briefly, then turned around again, gripped Thom's hair in a tight fist, and dragged his head back. "What do you want, old fool? Why did you come here? What could you possibly want from me?"

The few windows in the small carpentry workshop let in little light and even less air. Thom struggled to breathe in the stuffy atmosphere, feeling lightheaded as Jean's face blurred in front of him. "Came... to apologize."

Jean lifted him another inch by his hair, then dropped him. "Tch. You are as useless now as you were then."

Thom slumped forward, his head coming to rest on the floor, the relative coolness of the dirt against his forehead relieving him somewhat. He could feel the shape of the stiff paper folded up in a shirt pocket. Cadash's last letter, delivered by one of the new spymaster's trained crows. She still wanted him to return, once he'd finished this task he'd set for himself. Why did she love him? He knew she deserved more than a wreck of a man with so many sins to his name. She'd saved the world. She'd saved _him_. Why had he come here? The last one had simply spat at him and slammed the door in his face, shouting at him to leave and never return. That had been easy by comparison. What had he expected? He certainly did not expect them to forgive him. He did not _want_ them to forgive him. Perhaps this beating was precisely what he deserved.

"I'm sorry, anyway." He leaned up slightly, coughing at the sawdust and the blood from his broken nose sticking in his throat.  "I know it's useless."

Jean leaned back against a workbench, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly. "They hanged my little brother. He did not want to come to Nevarra, he would not leave our mother, who was ill. I told him to leave our sister to look after her, but he refused. They hanged him. Do you even remember Pierre?"

Thom nodded, recalling a fair-haired young man who had followed his older brother everywhere. They'd never been more than a few steps from one another, back then.

Jean glanced around the shed, as though looking for a clue to some mystery, hesitating. "I suppose I learned too well from you, Rainier. I should have stayed with him. You should have stayed with us! It was your neck that belonged in that noose, not his!"

"I know that. I _know_ that."

Jean crossed the room in two steps and grabbed him again, this time by the collar, hauling him roughly to his feet and shoving him toward a corner, where he leaned against a wall to remain upright.

"Then why are you still alive?"

"I went to Orlais last year and told them. They had Mornay. I... they let Mornay go, but I was also spared, eventually."

"Why the bloody hell would they let you go? The entire sorry thing was your idea from the beginning! We only ever did it for you! You told us it was necessary for the good of the Empire, to kill the entire party, so we did! Do you know how many times I have dreamed at night of cutting that little boy's throat? I did that for _you!"_

 _I didn't know they'd be there,_ he thought, but he knew it was a worthless excuse, as useless as his apologies. He'd given the order, and he had not told them to stop. _Mockingbird, mockingbird...._

"I know you did. I know you all did. I should never have involved any of you, and there's nothing I can do to fix it."

"Then why did you come here, Rainier? There is no point to this... whatever this is. I have nothing to say to you."

Thom shifted, trying to find a position that put less pressure on his damaged ribs. "You can go back to Orlais, if you want. They've called off the bounty. And I know it's worthless, but I _am_ sorry. If I could do it all again--"

"My father died when I was young and my mother has been dead many years now. My brother was hanged. I don't know if my sister would even speak to me, she blamed me entirely, 'Oh Jean, he only ever does what you do' is what she said and she was right. What is the point? That life is gone, thanks to you. You made me into a murderer, that is all that she sees. And she is not wrong - I am a murder, and you are a betrayer, a _liar_."

Thom shook his head, not in denial of his accusations, which he knew to be entirely true, but to his other assumptions. "You _can_ go back. Maybe she will listen, maybe she won't. But how do you know if you don't try? You don't have to be what you were, she'll see that, eventually, if you want her to."

Jean rolled his eyes like an exasperated child. "Is that what you are trying to do? You're a damn fool, Rainier. That, at least, has not changed. You can't erase the past."

Thom drew in a breath, trying not to show the pain it caused, and managed to shift his weight over his feet, standing up fully. "That's not what I said. Of course you can't erase the past. You _can_ change your future, perhaps. But that's up to you, not me. I'll leave now, if it's all the same to you. Though if you want to kill me, Jean, I can't blame you." 

Thom turned and walked unsteadily toward the door, feeling the weight of Jean's eyes behind him. He heard Jean take a step forward but he chose not to turn. If he got another beating, or a knife blade between his shoulders, so be it. A hand grabbed his shirt at his shoulder just before he opened the door, gripping the material and Thom tensed. Another heartbeat and Jean let go.

"Just go, Rainier. I suppose the bullshit rumors may be true. If you really were bought by the Inquisition, if you really are helping them in some way, they can have you, I do not care. Do not return."

Thom pushed the door open, pausing only for a moment before leaving. What else could he say?

 

* * *

Cadash slept soundly in his arms, more or less draped over him like some sort of dwarf-shaped blanket. She was often a bit clingy after he returned from a long trip, but he didn't exactly mind it. He could not find sleep tonight himself and wanted to get up and pace the room, or better yet, go walk in the cold night air until his head stopped swarming with unpleasant memories. He could not bring himself to move, though, and risk disturbing her slumber. She was a light sleeper, unlike himself. And he could tell she'd slept poorly in his absence.

They'd defeated Corypheus a few months ago and the Inquisition had busied itself in the meantime with mopping up after his scattered cronies. Red lyrium still contaminated many regions and there was much other damage done that the Inquisition was in a unique position to fix. Thom knew that she was getting tired of the job, though, and wanted desperately to bring it all to an end. She'd joked about moving into the old shack he'd stayed in back in the Ferelden hinterlands, and getting a dog. He wondered sometimes how much of a joke it had really been. The idea had a definite appeal.

Many of their friends had been packing up and leaving, one after another, (and in Leliana's case, become the Chantry's new Divine), and Cadash had been feeling a bit abandoned as a result. Her uncle, Varric Tethras, had returned to Kirkwall during his absence, and Sera seemed to be out on business. Dorian had finally packed up and headed back toward Tevinter to deal with his family and some other pressing issues. And who the hell knew where Solas went? Cadash got along well with Dagna, and a few others around Skyhold, but her closest friends were all gone. He'd hesitated to leave at all, but with more time on his hands to ruminate on the past after the war, it had been eating at him until she finally told him one morning to just go and do what he needed to do, and stop using her as an excuse to put it off. Well, it was hard to argue with that.

He'd thought returning home would bring him some peace, and in some ways, it had. He may never truly know why she loved him, but she did, he had many doubts, but not about that, not anymore. She knew what he'd done, and had accepted it, somehow, had reminded him again and again that he did not have to be defined by a past he had turned away from a long time ago. Sometimes he believed her. He wanted to believe her, desperately. It was the only way he could continue to draw breath, in the end.

He'd tried to convince Jean as well, but perhaps he was simply not as inspiring a figure as the Herald of Andraste. Maker's balls, he _knew_ he wasn't. He was a bit of a joke, in fact. So all he could do was try to be an example, to lay out a path behind him that others might choose to follow. It was all anyone could do, really.

His ribs and other injuries had mostly healed in the weeks it had taken him to return from Nevarra to Skyhold. There were others out there that he still owed a debt to. He still owed a debt to all of them, really, but he had nothing to pay with. Even his life no longer belonged to him - it had been bought and paid for, and not just with coin, by his lover, who was laying in his arms as though he somehow deserved such devotion.

To think she'd once told him that he must have stayed with her out of some indebtedness or pity, that _she_ did not deserve _him_. Thom shifted slightly, pulling her more firmly over his chest so he could shift his arm without unbalancing her. Pins and needles bloomed in his right hand and he rubbed at it with the left for a few minutes before resettling. Miraculously, Cadash did not wake. He closed his eyes, finally, and tried to rest, if not actually sleep. Perhaps things would look better in the morning.

 

* * *

"How many more of them are still out there, do you think?"

Thom stirred sugar into his tea as Cadash yawned over hers, trying to recall the mental list he had of his former men. He had slept poorly and she quite soundly, but she was clearly the more exhausted between them, still.

"Half a dozen, perhaps. I know who was caught years ago, but the rest? Maybe they still live, I don't know. Hard to pick up rumors after so much time has passed. People know people, though. And talk. It's just getting them to do it where I can hear. I'm not terribly popular, to say the least."

"Isn't Sera having some of her friends look into that one... oh, what was name?"

"Ludo. He was already getting on in years when... well he might still live, I don't know. She might be able to track down Nicolas, at least. He was laying low in some village west of Orlais not too long ago, and not even being discreet about it. He had family up north somewhere also." He watched as Cadash picked her breakfast apart, rather than eating it.

"I don't have to leave right away, love." She nodded almost imperceptibly but continued tearing apart a slice of bread like it had offended her. "Love?" She sniffled a bit and seemed close to tears, although he wasn't sure what he'd said to upset her, if anything. He reached across the table, pulling a small hand into both of his own. "I can stay as long as you need me. This can wait."

Her other hand came to rest on his and she rubbed at him absentmindedly for a while before letting go. There were times when he could almost read her mind and knew what she would say, and other times when he could not fathom what she was thinking. But in this matter, she was too much like himself to be a mystery - forever trying to balance an inherent penchant for selfishness with what others needed. In her case, she rarely indulged the former, too rarely in his mind - she exhausted herself regularly, to the point of making herself ill, trying to fix everything and please everyone, and never feeling that any of it was enough.

"I think I'd better stay at Skyhold for a while, regardless. No sense in going off on a rumor. Sera's people will come through eventually." _And perhaps I'll send her a message telling her to let her people know they need not hurry_.

"No, it's fine, really. I've just been busy lately. We've finally got the red lyrium in Emprise du Lion under control. There's a massive system of tunnels and caverns underneath that quarry where the Templars had stashed quite a lot of it, that's why it kept reappearing above ground. They'd collapsed all but one entrance and hidden the last one pretty well. Once we get all of the red lyrium out, we can flood the quarry and all of it, keep people out."

"Well that's progress, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is. There are some who feel the Inquisition is... no longer necessary. I'm trying to get everything done quickly, but..."

"'Some'? Who, exactly? The Empress has certainly been grateful and cooperative enough and King Alistair's not exactly--"

"Arl Teagan, for one. I've got him on one side telling me I need to get my people out of the areas near Redcliffe yesterday, while on the other side I've got literally dozens of local people begging me to send more soldiers. There are brigands and highwaymen coming into the area from... well, somewhere, I'm not exactly sure yet. That woman Leliana sent as her replacement is good, but not quite as good as she was, and the spies haven't been able to track them to one source, they seem to be showing up in small bands from every corner. A lot of them are carrying old Templar gear, but they're not red Templars, or any sort of Templars. I think Corypheus's people must have left behind a cache of supplies and gear somewhere. Several, probably. Or maybe it's leftovers from the mage-Templar war. I really have no idea. I'm hoping it's just displaced idiots finding this stuff and taking advantage, but I can't help but feel like it's part of something bigger. Maybe it's..."

Thom took a deep breath, hoping Cadash would pause to do the same. The color had risen in her cheeks as she spoke. She'd dealt with much bigger problems during the war with Corypheus, but she seemed at the end of her tether lately. Thom reached over to the teapot and refilled her cup, pushing it toward her. She rubbed at her eyes and face harshly before leaning back in her seat and taking a sip of the tea and letting some of the tension in her shoulders loosen.

"My love - please don't take this the wrong way - but brigands in the hinterlands is, in fact,  _Teagan's_ problem, not yours. It's his responsibility. Or King Alistair's. You saved the world, you don't have to fix every bloody stupid little problem in it. You're not the world's nanny, for Andraste's sake!"

Cadash shoved a piece of bacon in her mouth and chewed on it, looking out through the window across her balcony toward the Frostback peaks in the distance. "Everyone seems to expect me to be. Maybe not Teagan, but all those farmers and merchants out there. People are still being killed, Thom. Maybe not by a darkspawn with delusions of grandeur this time, but does it really matter who is doing it?"

"I suppose not. You want to protect people. That's not a bad thing, of course, but you can't do everything for everyone, all of the time. Why do you think I was teaching those farmers' sons how to fight back when we first met? Because I knew I couldn't always be there to do it for them. Teagan or Alistair or whoever else is complaining at you need to get off their arses and do something to protect their own people, or better yet, teach them to do it for themselves. The Inquisition won't be around forever."

Cadash buried her face in her hands, pulling at her beard as she grimaced at the thought. "Surely not. It _can't_. Can it?"

Thom leaned back in his chair, dragging the last piece of bread through the mess of jam, butter and bacon grease on his breakfast plate. "Of course not. We'll get that cabin and dog of yours sooner or later, I promise."


End file.
